The Black Terror #1
The Reiner-Feest-Verlag edition of The Black Terror #1 — titled Die Stimme der Nacht ("The Voice of the Night") — brought one of Eclipse Comics' most critically admired Copper Age revivals to the German-language market, exposing European readers to Dan Brereton's painted artwork at a moment when his star was rapidly rising. The original Eclipse mini-series had already earned Brereton the 1990 Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award, so the Feest reprint carried instant prestige. It is also a document of a specific crossroads in German comics publishing: Reiner-Feest-Verlag was importing ambitious American prestige-format work in the same year it would be sold to Ehapa, marking it as one of the final expressions of an independent publisher's editorial ambition before absorption into a major conglomerate.
ComicBooks.com Value
Find on ebay
Where to buy
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Reiner Feest — himself a lifelong comics fan and collector — founded his eponymous Heddesheim-based publishing house in 1980, building a catalog that mixed Franco-Belgian albums with selected American material and the adult-comics magazine *Comic Spiegel*. By late 1990, when this issue appeared, the publisher had licensed the full Eclipse *Black Terror* prestige-format series and issued the first volume under its own imprint, retaining the Eclipse brand prominently in the indicia. The following year, 1991, the entire Reiner-Feest-Verlag was acquired by Egmont Ehapa and continued as a label within that company until 2001 — meaning this German *Black Terror* series appeared in what was effectively the publisher's twilight months as an independent house.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published November 1990 by Reiner-Feest-Verlag (Heddesheim, Germany); ISBN 3-928108-26-3.
- Subtitled *Die Stimme der Nacht* ('The Voice of the Night'), directly translating the content of Eclipse Comics' *Black Terror* #1 (October 1989), subtitled 'Seduction of Deceit: Book 1.'
- The source material was written by Beau Smith and Chuck Dixon, with fully painted interior art and cover by Dan Brereton — a prestige-format 48-page squarebound production.
- Characters featured: The Black Terror (Ryan Delvecchio), Watson, Butts, and Frisbie — a noir-tinged reimagining of the original Golden Age public-domain character from the 1940s.
- The story premise places its protagonist as a mob enforcer who secretly operates as a masked vigilante working against a crime empire headed by a fictional Capone family — a dark, post-*Dark Knight* modernization of a Golden Age hero.
- Dan Brereton won the 1990 Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award (presented at Comic-Con International) in significant part for his work on this Eclipse mini-series — the award was announced before the Feest reprint appeared, lending the German edition immediate critical cachet.
- Reiner-Feest-Verlag was sold to Egmont Ehapa in 1991 and continued as a label (FeestComics) until 2001; this issue is therefore among the last wave of titles published under the original independent imprint.
- The Eclipse original carried an Eclipse Comics brand in the Feest edition's indicia, making this a co-branded international reprint rather than a fully localized release.
Full credits
Reprints
↩ Reprints The Black Terror #1 (1989)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.